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NBA on ESPN: "We don't need any player suffering from mental health ... but this sounds fishy." Charles Barkley and the Inside the NBA panel break down Paul George’s 25-game suspension and what it means for the Sixers moving forward.
Philadelphia 76ers forward Paul George has been suspended without pay for 25 games for violating the terms of the NBA/NBPA Anti-Drug Program, the league announced Saturday. "Over the past few years, I've discussed the importance of mental health, and in the course of recently seeking treatment for an issue of my own, I made the mistake of taking an improper medication," George said in a statement to ESPN's Shams Charania. "I take full responsibility for my actions and apologize to the Sixers organization, my teammates and the Philly fans for my poor decision making during this process. "I am focused on using this time to make sure that my mind and body are in the best condition to help the team when I return."
Former NBA player Kyle Singler made some wild claims in a concerning video on social media Saturday. In the explicative-laden rant posted to Instagram, Singler — who looks visually distraught and disheveled — alleges that people are taking his money, along with claiming that his child is being abused. “I don’t feel safe,” Singler said. “I’ve got people in my life taking my money — this is a message to everybody in my life who has been messing with me. My child is being sexually, physically, emotionally, spiritually abused. Shame on everybody that knows me that’s not helping, not intervening. F–k y’all. Duke, Medford (Oregon), everybody.”
Singler, 37, then says that he is currently homeless and that his child is being used as a “weapon” against him. “I have people in my life f–king me, and nobody’s there,” he added. “I’m on my own, homeless, and people are just feeding off me…My child has been a weapon against me, I’m not apologetic for living my life out of love — being there for people I want to be around.”
Jaylen Brown: “For me, like I live in Boston — it’s a cold weather. It’s kinda cold here in LA too right now.” “But in Boston it’s really cold.” “So one of the things that I like to do to kinda warm up my space — put on some salsa music, dance. It kinda like helps with your mental health and things like that.” “If you in Boston, you should try it. Put on some salsa music, some Hector Lavoe, some uh—yeah, you know.”
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In 2024, former Utah Jazz player Ricky Rubio announced that he was retiring from the game of basketball, choosing to focus on his mental health. Love, who had been teammates with Rubio in Minnesota for three years, and then again later in Cleveland for another year, reached out to Rubio because he needed to get something off his chest. “One of my biggest regrets ... is that I wish I was a better teammate for him and other guys, but really for him, because he really cared,” Love said. “I actually apologized. It had haunted me that I’d never said that.”
Tatum won’t be returning to the floor anytime soon. But, that hasn’t stopped him from attending all team events and traveling to preseason and regular season games. He’s thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the team despite being indefinitely sidelined. “Not being able to be out there with the team is already tough enough,” Tatum said. “But still traveling and being with them during meetings and game[s] and practices and shootarounds, still trying to feel as much a part of the team as I can, I think it really helps my mental health a lot.”
Tyrese Haliburton: “Yeah. I just think I was—I'm going to be 100% transparent. Like for me, like a lot of that stuff early in the year was just like mentally, like it was just—I was in a really bad spot. Like, uh, felt like my body wasn’t 100%, but nobody’s body is ever really 100%. I was coming off the playoffs—or the Olympics—where I got hurt at the end of the Olympics. Didn’t really have a ton of time in training camp, um, and I was kind of dealing with some stuff early in the year. And I just—like my joy for basketball just wasn’t there. And I’m just such a guy who—basketball is so—I love the game. I love basketball. I feel like I’m going to be around basketball for the rest of my life. Like, it’s just like—I’m just one of those guys, you know? And it just wasn’t there. And it just took me to come out, speak to our sports therapist with the Pacers, with Coach Carlisle, sit down with those guys and say, ‘Hey, I am not okay.’ Like, I know you guys are doing your best to like look out for me, try to have conversations about basketball, but I’m just not okay in life, you know?
But in recent years when Eli would call his family — sometimes dialing Duncan more than a dozen times before and after games during his first seven seasons in the NBA — they didn’t know what to expect to hear on the other end. Eli heard voices. The auditory hallucinations, diagnosed in 2021 as schizophrenia, turned the big-hearted, caring side of his personality his family loved into a hypervigilant, protective paranoia that his parents, Elisabeth and Jeffrey, tried to de-escalate. As a last resort, they would call in Marta, a licensed therapist, and Duncan, who was Eli's "whisperer."
Duncan said: "The real challenge of that was the volatility. He would call me, he would make sure I was safe. He made sure I was OK. ... And then he could hang up. And sure enough, maybe, you know, 15 to 20 minutes later, he called me again. “So of course, in that stretch, I think, probably the greatest challenge was finding ways to compartmentalize and still try to perform. I always kept in perspective, like he’s the one going through it. And obviously it impacts us as a family. We were all sort of constantly anxious and on edge, but that was never the priority, making sure we were OK. It was always making sure he was OK.”
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The family plans to use its foundation to help other families avoid such potholes in the health care system as part of a broader goal of addressing mental and heart health and physical well-being. They envision offering grant-based help. After Eli's death, the family pointed donations toward Seacoast Mental Health Center, where Eli had received treatment. More than $120,000 has been raised, said Kelly Hartnett, the center's vice president of community relations.
Coby White recently re-launched the Coby White Family Foundation in hopes of helping Black and Brown youth with holistic mental health support, equitable opportunities and creative empowerment while resilience and confidence. The primarily focus of the CWFF is helping underprivileged youth in Chicago and White’s native North Carolina. “I feel like I can continue to impact the youth. It starts with showing them what the rights and the wrongs are and that violence ain’t ever the answer. There’s more to life than gang violence, more to life than being in a gang, more to life than what they have seen so far,” White said.
That realization didn’t dull the pain when the trade finally went down. Two days before the deal, Randle appeared at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new school in the Bronx. Knicks leadership, including team president Leon Rose and head coach Tom Thibodeau, came to watch Randle donate $1.3 million toward the project. Then, in a flash, he was gone. “When I got traded, I’m like damn, I can’t believe this got taken from me,” Randle said. “It’s like, you worked so hard to build something, and it was just snatched away.” It was late September, and Kendra was pregnant. Kyden was in school and had a strong group of friends that he did not want to leave.
Giannis Antetokounmpo: Because if you're a perfectionist and you always want to be among the best, which I may not say, but in my head I think about it. I want to be among the best, I always want to be there. There was a moment when I saw it as a job and I talked to a sports psychologist. I've been talking to him for seven years now and he's helped me a lot in my way of thinking, not only in the sports part, but also in life as a dad, as a husband, as a brother, as a son, as a person in general. And he completely changed my mindset. You have to find joy.